Tag: reason

Today was my first day of nannying for the summer. I’ve been going back and forth from excited to dreading for the last few weeks, and this morning I woke up a mixture of nervous and excited. It was a beautiful morning and I had high hopes that my first day on the job would be a success.

All three kids were awake when I got there at 7:30. They had already eaten breakfast, the TV was on and everyone was behaving. It was going great!

Until we went outside.

Kids were in the pool playing, I was picking up towels and avoiding getting splashed by the water fights happening in the pool, the dog was running around the yard. Then the oldest decided to walk to and ice cream shop with a friend. We got mom’s permission, all was well.

Or so I thought.

The dog, a year-old poodle named Ellie, wanted to follow them. I held onto her until they were out of sight so that she wouldn’t run off. Then, set her back on the ground. She sniffed around a bit, picked up a toy and put it down, then she must have remembered that she wanted to follow, because she took off after the girls.

I ran after her, calling her name over and over.

She was on a mission.

The car didn’t stop.

She was dead on impact.

The rest of the day is a little bit of a blur. The parents were contacted, we rushed to the vets office, there were lots of tears and lots of apologies. I talked to the nurses in the vets office, who asked what had happened. One of them, somewhat jokingly, said “Not a very good first day, huh?” I laughed it off.

But really, ouch.

Her words, which were said with no intention of harm, had me sobbing as I drove home to the comforting arms of my mom after all was taken care of with the family.

I feel like a failure. I know it’s not really my fault, but I was the adult responsible, I was in charge. I’m still grasping for something I could have done, something I could say to fix it. But I can’t.

And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my first day…for lack of a better word…really sucked.

The most important thing, though, isn’t that I had an awful day, or that a family lost a very dear friend and companion. On my drive to their house this morning, I prayed that God would do with this day what he wanted to, and that it was in His hands. It would be easy, then, to blame Him for the day I had – after all, He was in the driver’s seat!

I don’t know why this happened, I don’t know where it fits in God’s plan, but I do know one thing that I will believe until my dying breath: God is good.